


Whispered at His Bedside While Holding His Hand

by AVegetarianCannibal



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Bedside Vigils, Hannigram - Freeform, M/M, POV First Person, Post-Episode: s03e13 The Wrath of the Lamb, hannibal's POV
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-07
Updated: 2017-06-07
Packaged: 2018-11-08 23:42:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11092371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AVegetarianCannibal/pseuds/AVegetarianCannibal
Summary: Will's life hangs in the balance as Hannibal keeps vigil at his bedside.





	Whispered at His Bedside While Holding His Hand

With complete accuracy I could replay every conversation, every look we shared. Down to every ion that drifted between us. I could recall the precise scent of you, the exact angle of your mouth every time you smiled at me. I tried to conjure you but I could not conjure you into places you had never been, or magic into existence conversations we had never had.

I tried, more times than I care to admit, but every time only a lifeless thing visited me, static, cold, like a doll made of clay. Because you are entirely unpredictable, every time, including the angles of your smile. Especially those. To recreate you would have been to create you, and as I believe we’ve established more than once, I cannot make you what you are not already. I can change your awareness of yourself, but you remain yourself, and even in my imagination that is a self which does not do my bidding.

So for three years you did not visit me even in my palace.

I flung all the doors open, inviting you to come. I stocked the streams I knew you favor, dappled the leaves as they would look in the seasons you prefer. You didn’t come. The static _thing_ came, looking past me with dead eyes. I would have dug entire rivers from the earth using my hands, shook the clouds to fill them with rain, if it would have lured some spirited facsimile of you instead of the doll self.

If you leave me now, do you understand I will take this meager room and even sparer bed and install them in my palace? I will keep you there in the last room I will ever build. I will bring philosophers and composers to see you. Bach will compose me something that reminds me of you. Mischa and Abigail will visit you with me. Do you understand?

I can conjure them all. _I cannot conjure you._

**Author's Note:**

> So anyway I have this headcanon that Hannibal can't recreate a totally realistic Will to keep him company in his memory palace. He can recreate everybody else, from his family to his favorite musicians and writers, and converse with them as if they were completely real and alive. But Will is so unpredictable, so uniquely WILL, that Hannibal can't recreate a realistic one to live forever in his palace. It's why he would have regretted killing him and why he'd be shattered if he lost Will after the ocean dive. He would be able to replay old memories of Will, but there would be no new interactions.


End file.
